


Where the Sky meets the Sea

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Gen, and a bit after Marco, chuck gets his hypochondria from their mother, funeral confrontation, set after the events mentioned in Bali Ha'i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 08:19:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6366574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the funeral, Jimmy holds out his arms for a hug.</p><p>Chuck looks at him like he’s just lit up a cigarette in a cancer ward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Sky meets the Sea

After the funeral, Jimmy holds out his arms for a hug.

Chuck looks at him like he’s just lit up a cigarette in a cancer ward.

The rest of the family are back in the main hall. Aunt Phyllis inflicting her perfume on anyone within arm’s reach. Cousin Ned trying desperately to be useful to anyone at all so he didn’t have to go up close to the body to say his goodbyes. Chuck and Jimmy’s mother on her sixth hysterical collapse of the day, this time about the absence of a distant cousin (“surgery? Well you’d expect him to at least  _ call!”)  _ so Chuck decided to take refuge in the bathroom. Jimmy decided to follow him.

“What?” Jimmy’s face is like a kicked puppy. It’s his best weapon. How could you hold a grudge against that face? Jimmy’s arms still hang open, as if that alone would encourage Chuck to throw himself into them.

“I was looking over the books,” Chuck says. He tries to keep his voice neutral. It’s hard.

“So?” Jimmy’s innocent as an altar boy. It’s a look he’s cultivated all throughout childhood, and it’s only today that Chuck really feels the sting of it.

“Was it worth it?” he asks, unable to keep a note of bitterness from creeping into his voice. “Did it get you in good with those losers you hang around?”

Confusion clouds Jimmy’s face. His arms finally wilt back to his sides. The suit doesn’t quite fit him, it’s one of dad’s old cast-offs and the sudden recognition of it hits Chuck with a wave of cold fury.

“What did you do, did you blow it on drinks with that loser Marco?”

“Hey!” Jimmy’s first volley of defensiveness. “Marco’s a good guy. What the hell are you saying?”

Chuck glares at him. Dad’s suit wrinkles around the shoulders and inseam. A night on a hanger might cure it, but Jimmy has never known how to treat a suit. 

Yet he’s the one who got it.

“I was looking over the books,” Chuck repeats, “I saw what you were doing.”

Jimmy’s gets a look of dawning realization—finally, the clouds part—and starts stammering. Chuck doesn’t give the lie time to gestate. He’s got to kill this here and now, before it grows into something ugly.

“Skimming? From your own father’s till? Jesus, i didn’t think you were that low.”

Jimmy hunches into himself, going on the defense. “What? What’s the big deal? Everybody does that, it’s like the unwritten law of shopkeeping.”

“Not that much, Jimmy.” It’s all Chuck can do to keep from shouting. “Not that much, and not from family. God, you should’ve seen dad’s face when I told—”

“You  _ told  _ him?” Jimmy’s absolutely livid. “Goddamn, Chuck, if you’d come to me—I was working on making it right again!”

“That doesn’t make any difference. Jimmy, you stole from dad! For years! Do you have any idea how much he put towards this shop?”

“Of course!” And Jimmy actually has the balls to look hurt. “I live here, remember? I saw him every day while you were away at lawschool, being a  _ success _ .” The word drips like poison off his tongue. “Does the ledger say how much time I spent helping out, huh? All the effort I put in while you were off polishing apples?”

It’s a page out of mom’s classic playbook, flip the guilt back around, but Chuck is ready for it. 

“So you think you’ve spent so much effort, you deserve a little more, is that right?” 

Jimmy’s has no riposte. He’s looking down in the urinals, reading the little pink cake. Chuck has forgotten about the bladder he’d come in here to relieve, it’s not troubling him anymore. What’s giving him grief are his eyes and his temples. The lighting is too bright in here. Everything’s too bright in here.

“Is. that. Right?”

Jimmy won’t look at him. Chuck steps forward.

“I’m not like mom and dad, Jimmy. You can’t just pout your lip and make this all go away.”

“Yeah, you’ll never let me forget how I killed dad,” Jimmy murmurs petulantly, dabbing one eye with a sleeve. 

“And don’t think  _ that’s  _ going to work on me, either. You’re an adult. And adults have consequences.”

“Not like this! God, nothing gets past you, does it? Why didn’t you just spring it on mom, while you’re at it?”

“The stress would have gone right to her sciatica, she’d have collapsed for a week.”

“That isn’t how it works and you know it isn’t!”

“That’s what happens around you! Ten minutes alone with you and  _ I _ already have a headache.”

Chuck grinds his fists into his eyes. The lights above him are giving off a faint buzz he can feel in his teeth. 

Jimmy looks back at him. There isn’t a trace of arrogance in his face. He isn’t even angry. He’s just very, very sad, and it hits Chuck where it hurts.

“Come on,” he says, “do we have to do this now?” Pleading. Beseeching. He holds his arms out. “We can talk after, you can yell at me all you want, but please, just not right now.”

And Chuck really, really wants to give Jimmy a hug. Because he’s sad too. Because their father has just died, and adulthood has hit Chuck right in the face and he’s realized that there is nothing standing between him and the world anymore. But he has resolved to be the thing Jimmy really needs right now, not what he wants. The authority figure he never got in dad.

Chuck says, “I’ll be outside, Jimmy,” and sidesteps his hug.

He joins their relatives and rouses mom from her stupor and shepherds her like a good son. Jimmy emerges from the bathroom ten minutes later, eyes suspiciously bright, but he still courteously allows Phyllis to rub  _ eu de retiree _ all over his dead father’s jacket. Chuck does his best not to even look at Jimmy, but this is stymied when his mother takes his face in her hands and sighs. 

“My two beautiful boys,” she says,  “come over here, Jimmy. Give Chuck a hug. You haven’t since he got back.”

And Jimmy had just enough grace not to look smug as he walks up, but he holds the embrace a minute longer than he has to.  _ So there _ , his grip says.

Chuck thinks back on this as he stands at his door, hand at the knob. Jimmy’s car is outside. He’s parked but hasn’t come out. Chuck wants to come out. He wants Jimmy to ask for a hug, because he’s long forgotten how to offer one. He wants Jimmy to charm his way out of the argument, try to buy his way back into Chuck’s good graces with groceries because Ernesto never gets it right, but the yellow car sits at the curb and the humming of the high wires outside his house give Chuck a headache. 

Jimmy drives away. 

Chuck lays down.


End file.
